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The New World of Darkness system is close to being a generic system, on a par with Basic Roleplaying, Omni System, Unisystem, etc. It's not my cup of tea, but it's certainly serviceable.

The problems I see with using nWoD as a generic system revolve around finding material for other genres. GURPS has that in spades, the new Basic Roleplaying will supplement that lack (if you can't scare up Worlds of Wonder or another out-of-print Chaosium release in the relevant genre), and most of the others have worldbooks in multiple genres. To date, White Wolf has concentrated on modern horror/gothic, with the occasional excursion into the Middle Ages (or, recently, Rome).

Specific holes I can see:

A catalog of futuristic gear.

Spaceship and starship rules. (Are there even rules for modern/historical vehicles?)

Rules for historic/modern military equipment, if you need that sort of thing.

Yes, you can always borrow from GURPS and other games, but it does seem like more work for the GM than picking a system geared to a genre, or systems with support for multi-genre play.

Last edited by fmitchell; 01-18-2008 at 01:21 AM.
Reason: Take into account Second Sight, etc.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
- Charles Babbage (1791 - 1871)

fmitchell your saying you use the nWOD system for games other than WOD? From what you posted it sounds like GURPS except it is missing support for the genres that GURPS is most famous for catering too. However, if I understood you correctly the nWOD system would be perfect for "GURPSing" any type of horror campaign (technology and history aside of course)?

Interesting indeed. How well would using the nWOD system as the universal rule system for playing the oWOD work out? I've read the rules for oWOD are sparse and not exactly all in one place. That the different WOD game lines don't really blend well as they weren't originally designed to be mixed.

Interesting indeed. How well would using the nWOD system as the universal rule system for playing the oWOD work out? I've read the rules for oWOD are sparse and not exactly all in one place. That the different WOD game lines don't really blend well as they weren't originally designed to be mixed.

In the OWoD line, there is a serious power disparity between the games and creatures; mummies were generally considered the weakest. The NWoD addresses this issue for the most part.

The New World of Darkness system is close to being a generic system, on a par with Basic Roleplaying, Omni System, Unisystem, etc. It's not my cup of tea, but it's certainly serviceable.

The problems I see with using nWoD as a generic system revolve around finding material for other genres. GURPS has that in spades, the new Basic Roleplaying will supplement that lack (if you can't scare up Worlds of Wonder or another out-of-print Chaosium release in the relevant genre), and most of the others have worldbooks in multiple genres. To date, White Wolf has concentrated on modern horror/gothic, with the occasional excursion into the Middle Ages (or, recently, Rome).

Specific holes I can see:

A catalog of futuristic gear.

Spaceship and starship rules. (Are there even rules for modern/historical vehicles?)

Rules for historic/modern military equipment, if you need that sort of thing.

Yes, you can always borrow from GURPS and other games, but it does seem like more work for the GM than picking a system geared to a genre, or systems with support for multi-genre play.

Mostly right, I'm not suggesting anyone do it I have enough other RPG matieral to steal ideas from and I know that whatever I need is 1-5 for standard 6+ for supernatural. Heres what I would do in your specific problems. I'll fully admit GURPS is better at this but I find the time saved by everyone making their characters in 5 min is worth the loss of source books.

A catalog of futuristic gear. - Shadowrun Books - Read it and then grab a similar power from Vampire/Werewolf/etc

Spaceship and starship rules. (Are there even rules for modern/historical vehicles?) - Old FASA Star Trek - And make it up

Again, its what I do. Not for everyone nor the best solution. Also again the reason I do it is to save time at character creation (gurps usually takes my group 3+ hours to make a character where as nWOD is 5min) Once your in game with rare exeptions the systems take similar time to resolve. Gurps is a little bit slower with full automatic weapons and a couple other places but nWOD could take as long or longer if a lot of 10s are rolled.

Its the advantages and disadvatages... If you don't have a clear idea of what you want there are too many options. If nWOD gave you a ton of merit points I could see the same thing happening. The GM could fix this by cutting the lists down of course (which is the better solution) but I choose to do the harder and make stuff up for nWOD oh and I love how nWOD does flaws! and have an irrational hate pt buy flaws.

Three hours seems a bit much. If I go with GURPS I plan to give all my players a list of what is not allowed for characters before they show up. I'll provide them with basic 50 point templates for reference as to what I think would be useful for the setting. Using something like the GURPS Character Assistant would also greatly speed things up. I think the majority of the time wasted here is done so by the players and is not necessarily the fault of the system, but human indecision. Then again I plan to not let any players in the door unless they have a completed character in hand lol.

Haven't played any new versions of the game but spent many hours in the late 80's chasing Dark Minions through out the world. Remember doing a great adventure with a church that was in between the the Berlin wall, or i should say the wall was built around it. My ex-wife played it once and she was so scared she refused to play Dark Conspiracy again.